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Competing Distractors Facilitate Visual Search in Heterogeneous Displays
In the present study, we examine how observers search among complex displays. Participants were asked to search for a big red horizontal line among 119 distractor lines of various sizes, orientations and colours, leading to 36 different feature combinations. To understand how people search in such a...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4980025/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27508298 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160914 |
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author | Kong, Garry Alais, David Van der Burg, Erik |
author_facet | Kong, Garry Alais, David Van der Burg, Erik |
author_sort | Kong, Garry |
collection | PubMed |
description | In the present study, we examine how observers search among complex displays. Participants were asked to search for a big red horizontal line among 119 distractor lines of various sizes, orientations and colours, leading to 36 different feature combinations. To understand how people search in such a heterogeneous display, we evolved the search display by using a genetic algorithm (Experiment 1). The best displays (i.e., displays corresponding to the fastest reaction times) were selected and combined to create new, evolved displays. Search times declined over generations. Results show that items sharing the same colour and orientation as the target disappeared over generations, implying they interfered with search, but items sharing the same colour and were 12.5° different in orientation only interfered if they were also the same size. Furthermore, and inconsistent with most dominant visual search theories, we found that non-red horizontal distractors increased over generations, indicating that these distractors facilitated visual search while participants were searching for a big red horizontally oriented target. In Experiments 2 and 3, we replicated these results using conventional, factorial experiments. Interestingly, in Experiment 4, we found that this facilitation effect was only present when the displays were very heterogeneous. While current models of visual search are able to successfully describe search in homogeneous displays, our results challenge the ability of these models to describe visual search in heterogeneous environments. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4980025 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49800252016-08-25 Competing Distractors Facilitate Visual Search in Heterogeneous Displays Kong, Garry Alais, David Van der Burg, Erik PLoS One Research Article In the present study, we examine how observers search among complex displays. Participants were asked to search for a big red horizontal line among 119 distractor lines of various sizes, orientations and colours, leading to 36 different feature combinations. To understand how people search in such a heterogeneous display, we evolved the search display by using a genetic algorithm (Experiment 1). The best displays (i.e., displays corresponding to the fastest reaction times) were selected and combined to create new, evolved displays. Search times declined over generations. Results show that items sharing the same colour and orientation as the target disappeared over generations, implying they interfered with search, but items sharing the same colour and were 12.5° different in orientation only interfered if they were also the same size. Furthermore, and inconsistent with most dominant visual search theories, we found that non-red horizontal distractors increased over generations, indicating that these distractors facilitated visual search while participants were searching for a big red horizontally oriented target. In Experiments 2 and 3, we replicated these results using conventional, factorial experiments. Interestingly, in Experiment 4, we found that this facilitation effect was only present when the displays were very heterogeneous. While current models of visual search are able to successfully describe search in homogeneous displays, our results challenge the ability of these models to describe visual search in heterogeneous environments. Public Library of Science 2016-08-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4980025/ /pubmed/27508298 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160914 Text en © 2016 Kong et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Kong, Garry Alais, David Van der Burg, Erik Competing Distractors Facilitate Visual Search in Heterogeneous Displays |
title | Competing Distractors Facilitate Visual Search in Heterogeneous Displays |
title_full | Competing Distractors Facilitate Visual Search in Heterogeneous Displays |
title_fullStr | Competing Distractors Facilitate Visual Search in Heterogeneous Displays |
title_full_unstemmed | Competing Distractors Facilitate Visual Search in Heterogeneous Displays |
title_short | Competing Distractors Facilitate Visual Search in Heterogeneous Displays |
title_sort | competing distractors facilitate visual search in heterogeneous displays |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4980025/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27508298 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160914 |
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